Sunday, September 30, 2018

Staunton,
September 30 – One of Ingushetia’s most influential taips has circulated a video
to all other clans in the republic that calls for annulling the border
agreement signed by Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov and Ingushetia’s Yunus-Bek
Kadyrov four days ago and demanding a referendum on the issue and on the way in
which the republic leader is chosen.

But looming behind
these immediate problems are two larger ones. On the one hand, there appear to
be fears among some Ingush that Chechnya’s Kadyrov, possibly with Moscow’s
support, is preparing to assume control over Ingushetia as part of a regional
amalgamation plan based on the notion that economics rather than ethnicity
should determine borders.

And on the other, there are concerns
that Kadyrov may not limit himself to that but may demand territorial changes
and political concessions from Daghestan, again possibly with Moscow’s support,
to build up his own authority by offering to pacify that republic for Moscow,
something the Kremlin appears to want.

Moscow political scientist Dmitry
Oreshkin suggests both, pointing out that Kadyrov “can permit himself what for
example Yevkurov cannot.” The Chechen leader is very effective in advancing his
interests, including expanding his influence in and over neighboring republics
and doing so “not without Moscow’s support (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/325871/).

He argues that the
border accord won’t calm he situation but rather lead to a new outbreak of conflict
with greater force “after a certain time,” especially if Kadyrov presses his
case and is not reined in either in Ingushetia or in Daghestan where there is a
significant and often embattled Chechen ethnic community.

If Kadyrov were just speaking for
himself, far fewer people in Ingushetia or Daghestan would be worried, Vesel
says. But the Chechen leader appears to have Moscow’s backing to continue to
push his own agenda and therefore undoubtedly feels that no on in the region
can stop him from achieving his goals.

“The Kremlin needs to reward Kadyrov
for his past” services in Chechnya and Ukraine “and his possible future ones”
in neighboring Daghestan “where the Kremlin over the past year has been purging
local elites” and where it may need Kadyrov’s help to prevent an explosion,
Vesel continues.

“Ho this will end for the North
Caucasus and for Russia as a whole,” the Ukrainian commentator says, “is
difficult to say.”But the accord that
was supposed to solve problems hasn’t, and “the Ingush, earlier considered a
much more peaceful people than the Chechens hass learned a great deal from its
neighbors.”

Those lessons are not ones that Moscow
wants anyone to learn, and so more conflicts are certain to be ahead, possibly
at a level of intensity not seen in the North Caucasus for more than a
decade.

Staunton, September 29 – Nearly a
half century ago, Roman Goul, a First Emigration Russian writer and critic and
editor of Novy zhurnal, published two
volumes of literary criticism under the title Odvukon, a Cossack term used to describe someone who rides two
horses at once while standing up.

Goul used the term to refer to what
he saw as a Russian phenomenon that emerged following the Bolshevik revolution,
one that led some of Russia’s finest writers and poets to go into emigration
where they continued to work while others remained inside the Soviet Union and
attempted to do what they could within the limits of communist restrictions.

According to the émigré writer,
Russian culture in the 20th century had been forced into the
position of someone who was riding two horses at once, odvukon, as Cossacks put it, a difficult task but one that eventually,
Goul hoped, would allow it to survive with the two streams coming together.

Many scholars and commentators in
both Russia and the West have picked up that idea as far as Russian culture is
concerned, especially since 1991 when the collapse of the Soviet system allowed
the two streams to flow back together.But few of them have extended this metaphor to the other nations which
lived under Soviet power; and that is a profound mistake.

In almost all cases, the cultures
and even the political lives of nations living under communism proceeded odvukon, with some of its
representatives living beyond the borders of the Soviet Union and developing
their national cultures and ideas while others remained inside doing what they
could to do the same thing.

Examples from the Baltic nations,
Belarusians, Ukrainians, Armenians, and Georgians instantly spring to mind, but
there were other and perhaps even more important examples of this phenomenon
elsewhere, especially among the Turkic peoples who seldom have attracted as
much attention.

That makes a new book by Jeffrey B.
Lilley, Have the Mountains Fallen? Two
Journeys of Loss and Redemption in the Cold War (Indiana University Press,
2018).In a sympathetic and detailed way,
he traces the complicated careers of two distinguished representatives of the
Kyrgyz nation, Chingiz Aitmatov and Azamat Altay.

Aitmatov, of course, remained in the
Soviet Union and distinguished himself both by pushing the limits of the
permissible in his novels about the life of his people and by bringing to the
attention of an international audience a nation many would never have heard of
had it not been for his remarkable works.

More than that, however, he talked
about the legend of the mankurts,
people who were reduced to subhuman slaves by regimes that stole their memory
from them, a legend that has become a fundamental key to the understanding not
only of the Kyrgyz but of all the peoples who were forced to live under
sovietism.

If Aitmatov is internationally
known, Altay is not; but as Lilley makes clear, he certainly deserves to be. From
the start at odds with the Soviet system and finding himself in the West as a
result of World War II, he made a distinguished contribution to the study of
Central Asia as a researcher at Columbia University and as a broadcaster for
Radio Liberty’s Kyrgyz Service.

In the last years of their lives,
the two men, one a distinguished Soviet writer and the other someone who was
usually denounced by Soviet propagandists as a traitor edged closer together
because ultimately they were informed by a deep and profound appreciation of
their nation’s culture and history.

James Lilley shows how that
happened.For his efforts, he deserves
the thanks of all those who study the former Soviet space. More than that,
however, his book provides a model for what representatives of other nations
with that experience can and should do.Everyone will benefit if such works appear.

Staunton,
September 29 – Many commentators are suggesting that Vladimir Putin may seek “a
new Crimea” to salvage his ratings with the Russian people, but Vitaly
Portnikov says that he “doesn’t think that anyone in the Kremlin was thinking
about ratings when the annexation of Crimea occurred.”

“The meaning of the annexation of
Crimea was completely different,” Portnikov continues. “It consisted in the
need [the Kremlin saw] to send a signal to the West that the so-called
kidnapping of Ukraine would not remain without consequences” from the Russian
side given that Moscow viewed what occurred in Kyiv in 2013-2014 as a US
“special operation.”

After Yanukovich was forced to flee
Ukraine as a result of the Maidan, the Ukrainian commentator says, Moscow “took
the decision to carry out its long-prepared operation to annex Crimea.” And
“when this Putin signal was not heard, [Moscow] proceeded to the next phase of
this operation by launching the war in eastern Ukraine.”

These events “did not have anything
to do with ratings,” Portnikov argues. They were a side benefit “of special
operations of a completely different character.”That must be remembered now given all the
talk that Putin may launch an invasion of yet another country in order to boost
his standing at home.

Portnikov says that he doesn’t know
whether anyone in Moscow has set this task given the consequences of the
Crimean Anschluss. But one thing is clear: currently there are no territories
identified by Russian propaganda and ideology “in general” or in nature which
correspond to the position of Crimea.Even the Donbass isn’t in the same category.

Belarus too “is not exactly a part
of the imperial myth” either, the Ukrainian commentator says. “It is part of the
Eurasian Union and the Union State. We have always said that integration with
Belarus will not lead to these consequences because Belarus is not part of the
imperial myth and doesn’t interest Russians from the point of view of mass
consciousness.”

That is a sharp contrast to Russian
attitudes about Ukraine. Until the war, Russians shared Putin’s view that
Ukrainians were not a separate nation.But because of Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression, they now understand
that it is a separate nation. Consequently, were Putin to try to annex more, it
wouldn’t pay him the same dividends at home.

Consequently, Portnikov says, “I do
not see any sense in any special operation of this type.” And one must remember
that Putin approaches such issues as “special operations” rather than as
wars.”He will use Russian military
force openly only when he doesn’t have any other option.

For a special operation to be
appropriate requires its own specific goals, Portnikov argues. And it requires
that those who launch it consider the environment in which they are doing so.
When Putin seized Crimea and invaded the Donbass, Russians “weren’t thinking
about their standard of living.” But now they are. No war will solve their
problems: instead, given the certainty of sanctions, it will make them worse.

For those reasons, the Ukrainian
analyst continues, he does not think “that there will be a military conflict.”
There will be further efforts to disorganize and destabilize Ukraine and
perhaps other of Russia’s neighbors as well; but not a war. Putin’s range of
possibilities is increasingly “not very large.”